Anita Sarkeesian has a collection of misogynistic, sexist messages to her.
I’m beyond being embarrassed for being male. At this point, I’m ashamed of my species.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Look at their pictures. The scary part in all this is that these aren’t people dressed in all white with hoods on their heads and they’re not wearing camo and holding AK-47s. They’re completely “normal” members of society. I bet you all of us work with and associate politely with them and I bet some of them are even our friends. Fucking scary and hugely disappointing at the same time.
These are the modern day versions of the vile segregationists and racists of the Civil Rights movement era. There’s simply no difference. It’s just substituting women for black people.
Most of their insulting vocabulary consists of c-nt. Intellectual osmosis, anyone?
You know, looking at this sort of thing and the way that Twitter does nothing to stop it, I can’t help but think that there might be an opportunity for re-education in it.
I’m not technically minded, but I wonder if you could make some sort of automated program – a list that you could add account names to – which was set up so that whenever an account on the list sent you a tweet, it forwarded it to someone else on the list. Redirect the torrent of bile and hate and venom back out onto the people spewing it, and give them a taste of what it feels like, so to speak.
I mean, it would kind of screw up any ability to actually use your account, since that would instantly make up 99% of your content. And it wouldn’t be that fun for your followers, having to see all of the sewage being shot back out again. But it might make a few people stop and consider what it’s like to have complete strangers tossing this stuff at you if they were to get abuse winging their way for once in a while.
aleph,
Er, letting aside that that’s kind of a really pure form of two wrongs trying to make a right, it assumes a basic symmetry to abuse that just isn’t there. This kind of stuff is targeted along a power differential– it’s not just assholism, it’s gendered or racialized hate. If you echo it back at them, they’ll just see their own sentiment repeated for some reason. It won’t affect them because it’s clearly targeted at the Other.
Nentuaby: Hmm. Yeah, I suppose. One of those ideas that’s cathartic in theory but not very helpful in practice. Ah well.
I’m bookmarking that to show to those who insist that “c*unt” is just a harmless jest among friends.
Saad #1
Indeed.
And many of them appear to make comments using their meatspace name and put such hate and violence on the internet for all to see.
They see no need to hide to disguise themselves. This is not just a problem of a few arseholes. This is a problem in society.
That’s what I meant by the racists during the Civil Rights times and before. They openly did it and said it. Their reputation in society wasn’t affected by it. Hell, we’ve all seen the pictures of common city folk attending lynchings.
This is the modern version of it. They’ll openly say unbelievably awful things regarding women using their real names and real social media accounts (on which they most certainly have friends and family and acquaintances from all walks of life).
Fuck, I read some of those things again. I wish I could tell Anita in person to not lose heart and that there are tons of (I’d like to think) men wishing her well and completely opposed to this shit.
And yeah, it is an atrocity that Twitter is okay with this. If the misogyny was replaced with equally vile racism directed at one person, would they allow it still?
Um… haven’t they let racist shit slide in the past? Twitter doesn’t seem to give a shit about stopping the slime. On the flipside, it makes the problem more visible. Not that that makes up for the attack venue, though.
Their vocabulary is so very…limited. And yet, we keep getting told that c*nt is such an innocent, non-sexist word.
SAAD:
FFS, all someone had to do was follow #Ferguson for a day to see all manner of vile racism.
Chigau:
I did the same thing, for just that reason.
gmacs,
Oh, I’ve never been on Twitter. I guess better it stay that way.
It stuns me how many people are willing to post this stuff under what appears to be their own name.
I think Twitter, like Reddit, lets just about everything slide under the glorious banner of Free Speech. The only issues they’re willing to take a stand on are those they perceive to affect their ability to operate directly.
There’s nothing in place to prevent horrible harassment of the average user. But if a sufficiently high-profile, congenial and sympathetic celebrity figure (such as Robin Williams’ daughter) is attacked, that draws too much negative attention; so they pay lip service to a policy to resolve that problem, specifically. In the narrowest way possible. (“Twitter will remove imagery of deceased individuals in certain circumstances.”)
Their concern seems to be stopping the current complaint, not actually making the situation better.
What I learned from living 45 years in the US:
Fix the symptoms, and ignore the underlying causes. It’s more profitable, in every way.
That’s the lesson.
Anyone who has actually looked underneath knows this is a lie.
So, there are going to be folks that claim that the internet + anonymity is what makes it easier for these types of people to be assholes. Anita’s page clearly proves that wrong on the anonymity factor.
@Saad #9, I’m going to answer your question with yes. I remember PZ posting some thread a while ago where some Hispanic kid sang the national anthem at some event, and many racist twits flipped the fuck out about it, many of them willing to use their real name to post that crap. I don’t remember Twitter doing anything about it.
Saad @ 1
The one from what appears to be a proud father holding his very young daughter depresses me the most.
Please don’t, in reaction to these vile people, ban the word cxnt. Yes, it’s rooted something primal, but it’s become something more. So are the insults “d1ck” “pr1ck”, “c0ck” and “f+ckwit”. As a woman I still need it in it’s present form to decry my nation’s leadership while they’re selling off our collective assets, like our rivers, power stations, old growth forests etc, or for example if someone blatantly rips me off or drops a brick on my toe. If we must give up c..t at least come up with a better swear word -because my other go-to swear is” Jesus f.cking H Christ!” & that’s quite wordy,
This is not directly related to the post, but it does deal with some of the continued foolishness surrounding the people that say they are just fighting corruption when attacking Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. The Indiegogo fundraiser for Lawyers Against Gaming Corruption has been cancelled after a very sad little Reddit AMA where it came out that the lawyer they were hiring was actually the wife of the “Independent Party” on the Indegogo campaign team. Of course, they did not disclose this possible conflict. I find it amazing that these were the people that people were considering supporting to look into corruption in gaming.
You really don’t.
Around these parts, gendered insults of any stripe are unwelcome, which includes all of the above (except “fuckwit”).
You can be as invective-filled as you like, but if you have to resort to insults drawn from a person’s intrinsic traits, you’re hitting the wrong target. Surely you aren’t so unimaginative that you can’t find other words to use?
@18 Anna
I have never, in my entire life found the need or desire to use that word. And my oh-so-British boyfriend strangely doesn’t either. Somehow we’ve managed to come up with many far more imaginative and downright funny words that don’t rely on sexism without even thinking about it.
And that was long before I’d even considered why gendered insults made me uncomfortable. I just thought they were lazy.
I have never seen it used when it was not directed at a woman as this link shows, or trying to feminize (and therefore insult) someone/thing. Not worthwhile.
Kagato, you are right. I need some new swear words, and I’m not imaginative enough to come up with them. I feel really disgusted that the worst word we can come up with in our language refers to my genitals. What I was trying to say is, when something awful happens, we, as humans, say swear words. There’s not enough time to think.
So my impossible challenge is, come up with a nice swear word.
Madhatter, -I’m not British, I’m from down under, where swearing is a part of life. So, to be honest, I have heard that word many times and I might use it again if I was drunk. But what I really hate is the bullying of women on the ‘net,. It is just awful.
I don’t think there’s any disagreement then, anna. Some words and phrases are so ingrained in our culture that despite our best efforts they’re the first thing that comes to mind, and everyone slips sometimes.
I say get creative! Pretty much any random noun-action pairing sounds like an insult with the right tone.
Anyway, I’m outta here, you bunch of monkeyjugglers.
Hey! My monkeys like it when I juggle them, OKAY?! *harrumph*
Note to self: get mind out of gutter.
Anna, hi, I’m from Downunder too (where women glow and men chunder).
I’m always disappointed when insults turn out to have quite different meanings from what I thought. Like dropkick – I always thought it just meant a bit of an idiot. Well, it does, but it’s another name for a punt (both types of football kicks) and alas, punt is rhyming slang.
Bang goes another insult from my vocabulary.
Mate. a dropkick is a rugby term and it doesn’t have sexual connotations. It means something like “an east target”.
sorry, “easy target”.- I’m sure you can figure it out from the game.
or actually a more accurate translation might be “useless” because when you get a drop kick it doesn’t really help the team.
This kind of behaviour is not acceptable. Furthermore, most of the “comment” I have seen pertaining to Sarkeesian’s presentations does not address their content – although her argument is well-constructed and she has clearly spent some time researching the subject matter, there is almost always room for legitimate discussion of ideas, disagreement over details or even playing devil’s advocate. No one attempts to do this, or to at least go down that route honestly and with integrity. It is disappointing but, sadly, not surprising – especially given the stuff that comes in over my headphones while playing an online multiplayer game (first-person shooters seem to bring out the worst, but other games are not immune). The gaming community is a community that needs a lot of tidying up.
@ anna #22
Try a different style,
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-invective.html
for example.
Scroll down to the examples of invectives in literature section.
Modify syntax to suit the occasion.
Works verbally too. Anywhere. Memorize & wait for an occasion.
Just do a lot o’ research on invective.
Saad @1 – pictures?
TinEye and mail-the-employer time!
acetylcholine:
No. Your time would be better spent at helping to make things better, rather than posting nothing more than retaliation schemes.
Yeah, and they’ll just take it out on a female co-worker for “snitching”.
Anna
It’s one thing to use the word while talking dirty to your partner. It can be fun and sexy, if it’s something you’re both into.
It’s a whole ‘nother thing to use c*nt as an insult, ‘cuz the way it’s used, to indicate “this person is unpleasant and contemptible and undeserving of consideration or respect”, it’s saying that women’s body parts, and therefore women, are unpleasant and contemptible and undeserving of consideration or respect.
Jesus fucking tap-dancing Christ on a crutch.
That’s fucking it.
That is absolutely fucking IT.
I’ve loved video games since I was six years old. I’ve spent more hours lost in their warm embrace than I care to admit.
I never played online versions (at least, not with strangers) because I didn’t want to interact with the mouth-breathers who populate the servers. I avoided commenting on blogs or forums about them because I didn’t want to have to deal with the unformed opinions of ten-year-old dirtwads in training.
I watched all of Anita Sarkeesian’s videos with a lump in my stomach and a bad taste in the back of my throat. I didn’t see it. I was so damn blinded and … INURED to it that I just didn’t see it. I wanted so badly for her to be wrong about it. About any of it. About all of it. But damn me to a lifetime with Jesus if she isn’t just right about almost everything.
Well, I’m done with that.
From now on, I’m calling this shit out.
I’m telling people it’s not fucking okay. I’m unsubscribing from YouTube channels and blogs and newsletters that don’t EXPLICITLY condemn this shit. I’m blocking people on Facebook (and telling them why!) if they agree with those fuckers. I’m telling people at work they can’t talk like that. I’m telling my idiot neighbor down the road that he’s not welcome on my property anymore.
No more sidelines, no more tsk-tsking and shaking my head, wondering what I could ever do,
I’m done with all of it. I’m speaking up and calling people out. This is not acceptable.
I’m just sorry I waited this long.
good on ya!
anna @18:
I never used c*nt much over the years, so when I came to understand that it’s a bigoted slur, I gave it up. It doesn’t even spring to my lips when I get angry (and I wish it would stop springing to the lips of many other peoples; it is an oft-used gendered slur). I tend to use coarse words like douche -bag -nozzle -canoe, fuck -wit -face. pissant, ass -castle -hole, shit -head -piston -face -stain, stuff like that (I don’t usually refer to them as ‘swear’ or ‘curse’ words, bc of the religious roots of both those terms and the opposition to ‘profanity’ has roots in religious belief). Sometimes I want to use ‘dick’ as an insult, and it can work, bc while it’s a gendered slur, it’s punching up, rather than down, but trying to explain the difference between using one gendered slur, while condemning the use of other gendered slurs takes time I don’t always have, so I usually don’t use the word.
wmdon
Good for you!
Anna @27
Don’t patronise me, please. I know the word applies to more than one football code here. I also know it’s the same move described in other codes as a punt, and that part is rhyming slang in Australian English. It still comes down to a word meaning women’s genitals = contemptible, stupid, obnoxious.
Source
Another source
2kittehs
I don’t think anna was patronising.
I think anna is … unaware.
As an Australian, I’m also genuinely surprised that that is a meaning attributed to the word “dropkick”. I’m not challenging this, just shocked.
Skimming the list of Australian rhyming slang that 2kittehs linked to, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any other word listed there used in actual speech (and “dropkick” incredibly rarely). The whole rhyming slang thing seems to only ever appear in media to provide a readily recognisable Australian caricature, it’s not something people really do. But Wikipedia does say they’re “well established” and I guess it knows best… :|
Just a thought, as a code-switching person born into the working class, that whether or not you’ve ever heard a type of usage doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Sociolects exist.
Tony!,
Thank you for asscastle.
I coined ‘anal milliner’ and ‘rectal haberdasher’ for use in places where ‘asshat’ would be seen as out of line.
I don’t like Anita either, but you dumb assess are proving her point! Or at the very least giving her ammo!
Ranzoid:
That’s great. Why? If it isn’t for any significant or coherent reason, why bother bringing it up?
The fact that your only objection to the slurs, rape threats, death threats, etc. is “you are just giving her ammo” is rather disturbing.
I do understand this. It’s just that I was born working class, would probably be considered middle class now, have lived and worked in both regional and metropolitan areas, and of the list of “expressions in common use” have only ever heard one. I’m not denying they exist, just wondering what makes them “common”. Rhyming slang was pretty much dead even when the Crocodile Dundee movies were still a thing.
By way of apology for my derail: Zoe Quinn has been logging IRC discussion that seems to show that both the #gamergate and #notyourshield Twitter movements were deliberately and cynically engineered by a 4chan affiliated group that views SJWs as the greatest threat to humanity ever.